Sam Venable: Better get used to seeing bears

One day in the summer of 1968 — I was a rising senior at the University of Tennessee and working as a reporter for the old Knoxville Journal — we dispatched one of our photographers on a bizarre assignment.

It stemmed from a telephone tip we had gotten from a farmer at the Knox-Union County line. He’d been seeing a rare animal mingling with cattle in one of his fields. None of his neighbors would believe it. Could we send someone to verify his claim?

Hugh Lunsford was chosen for the assignment. For two reasons.

1. He was a veteran photographer, certainly up for this challenge.

2. He had a keen interest in the outdoors.

Hugh’s mission — one he could accomplish only by staking out a spot in one field and waiting patiently until late afternoon?

To snap a picture of a whitetail deer in the wild.

Yep, he got it. We ran it on Page 1 the next morning.

You have to be gray of beard, journalistically and biologically, to understand the significance of that event.

Outside of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee National Forest and Central Peninsula Wildlife Management Area (now called Chuck Swan), deer were virtually unknown in East Tennessee back then. There were occasional reports of sightings, some from reliable sources. But for a news photographer to come back with ironclad proof was big stuff.

What a difference half a century makes.

Knox County is knee-deep in deer these days. Wild turkeys, too. Ditto resident Canada geese. These animals represent some of the most successful wildlife management stories in modern history.

The same is now happening with black bears.

“I don’t ever foresee the day when bears are common in lowland residential areas, like deer and turkeys,” says Dan Gibbs, big game biologist for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency in Morristown.

“But they definitely are increasing throughout this region. We estimate outside the national park, the population from Johnson to Polk counties is around 4,000.”

This time of year, when young males are dispersing from their mamas and seeking to establish home ranges of their own, they’re liable to show up dang-near anywhere — as witness the multiple sightings that occurred last weekend in K-town.

“I look forward to the day when this isn’t a big news event,” said Gibbs.

“There are good bear populations to the north and south of Knox County. These animals are moving through right now. If people will take small steps — like keeping up their pet food, bird seed and garbage — the bears should keep moving and not be a problem.”